UI in Inkscape Part 1

There are lots of good tutorials on using Inkscape. The help projects that are included with Inkscape are also useful for learning how to use it. Basically, you use shapes to create your images. 

The simplest shape is the rectangle. Select the rectangle tool on the right (Shown with an orange arrow in the picture). Click and then drag to create a rectangle (hold control to make a square). While using this tool you can drag the top left and bottom right nodes to adjust the rectangle. If you pull the top right node, it will round the corners.

Now press Shift+Ctrl+F to open the coloring panel. Here you can change the fill color and the outline (stroke) color. You can also adjust the stroke style.

Let’s make a simple pause button by adding another rectangle. Now right click on this rectangle and select duplicate. Now press space bar or select the select tool (tool in the top on the right) to move the duplicated rectangle.

 My rectangles are not lined up. We can use the align tools to quickly move things. Open the align sidebar with Shift+Ctrl+A. While holding shift (and using the select tool), click on both of the rectangles. Then press the “center on horizontal axis” button under Align.

This is relatively simple. To learn more basics about using Inkscape, refer to the “Inkscape: basics” in the tutorials section of the help menu. Also, hovering over a tool gives a helpful tooltip. Play around with the different tools to get the hang of it. In the next tutorial we will make some more simple buttons.